As the century, nay, the millennium draws to a close, life in America is supposedly at its apogee. The Cold War is over, poverty, racism, and all other forms of social malaise are in retreat. Wealth. Freedom. Success. The American Dream. Never have we felt so secure. The world is our oyster. "So", Franzen seems to ask, "what's wrong with me?"
When the day is done we still puzzle over what it means to make sense of being ourselves in the world. Modern ascendancy has left such concerns drastically wanting. Franzen feels inundated with depersonalized technologies, both physical and social. No matter how fast our machines whir, no matter how reassuringly they hum, at the end of the day we are who we are. Left, as Franzen assures us, standing in the shower; naked and alone.
Franzen seems to understand who is audience is: the small-group of like-minded, self-identified, readers. He relies upon a keen sense of kinship with his audience: either you intuitively understand the various disconnects he wonders over, or you are likely unable to feel his sense of estrangement. These essays puzzle over how each of us is finally able to be okay with ourselves; though I wonder if Franzen would feel, personally, successful?
In a larger sense How To Be Alone is a series of essays letting like-minded people know that such disconcerting feelings that too often characterize the modern situation need not be experienced in isolation. Though the questions he drives at are finally particular to each person, that we share a common humanity in the first place, even amongst all the noise, might still be a truism that binds us. Finding the common ground in shared disassociation is Franzen's driving force. How he makes sense of it tells us about ourselves as birthed by, and standing in opposition to, the world we inhabit.
